Many corporate telephone call centers record the telephone conversations between their telephone operators and customers. Typically the recordings are made either for training purposes, used as examples to be reviewed later by new operators, or for quality assurance purposes, so that the performance of the telephone operators can be monitored and evaluated.
Today call centers may record telephone calls in one of two ways: (1) by either randomly recording conversations, or (2) by recording all conversations. When telephone interactions are screened randomly, a strong possibility exists that important conversations will not be recorded. In the case where all calls are recorded, a tremendous amount of resources can go to waste, since the vast majority of call center conversations are likely to be uneventful. Moreover, call center systems that are currently in place provide no means for alerting a supervisor in real-time if a problem situation arises other than by the call center agent. Instead, supervisors must rely on a subsequent review of the recording. Often times, from a customer service perspective, it is too late to rectify the situation.